March 9th – Early, Jockey Meadows. Still grey and dormant, with no hints of spring yet. The last place to wake up in these parts, it has its own desolate beauty in winter.
The cows that were here last summer are long gone, but their work – the removal of some of the most invasive species, and trimming back the long grass – remains.
It’ll be interesting to see the difference they’ve made when the meadow comes to life in a few weeks.
March 6th – Bloody hell Bob, not crocuses again!
Yes, crocuses. After the months of riding in dark, damp and cold, the brightness of the first spring flowers to me is magical, enchanting, life-affirming and beautiful. Like a hot shower after a long sleep, it’s awakening and you could enjoy it forever.
These are in Walsall Wood High Street, and remain, as every year I see them, a credit to those who planted them.
Thank you.
March 4th – Spring is really here. It’s not just the yellow crocuses in Kings Hill Park now, but the purple and white ones, too. Daffodils have joined the party, and the whole place looks gorgeous.
I know the daffs are early varieties, but they are gorgeous and a reminder that once the genie of spring has appeared, you can’t really get it back in the bottle.
Such a joy to the heart.
March 3rd – I was quite lucky with this, too; also handheld. The moon was my companion tonight as I rode through Sheffield and Walsall Wood, I noticed how bright it was. I love how if you can photograph it, detail you can’t see with the naked eye becomes evident.
All those miles of nothing between me and the moon. And yet, man has been there, and landed on that glowing ball.
Such a wonderful, enchanting thought.
March 3rd – Cold, windy. Horrid journeys to work, fast and fun journeys back. It seems we’re in for a blustery spring, but it was light nearly all the way home tonight – another week, and I might get home in the light.
Ah, blessed light.
I’ve been fiddling with the new camera – astoundingly to me, these shots were all handheld (I don’t have steady hands). This one seems more sensitive, if that’s the word, and seems to select a faster shutter in lower light than previous models. I’m liking it a lot.
It was a fair sunset tonight, but clear, and harsh. I was glad to get in.
March 2nd – Spotted in Darlaston in Victoria Park – is that a hint of Olympic Rings in spring flowers? Must have been a 2012 project…
February 25th – And then there’s Kings Hill Park, too. I couldn’t resist swinging past on this fine morning to check out the crocuses – and to my surprise, the snowdrops were also out in force; the ones here must be a later flowering variety.
Am I imagining it, or do yellow crocuses flower before other colours? Plenty of yellow ones about, but not so many violet.
After seeing these, you can’t fail to go to work with happiness in your heart: spring is coming, and nothing can stop it now.
February 25th – Sorry, I won’t feature Darlaston again for a few days, promise: but the town is my current muse and I do love it so – and it looks splendid in the winter sunshine.
The curious, frustrating and utterly unpredictable flip-flop weather at the moment means last night’s rain was this morning a gorgeous, almost still, warm sunny winter day. Darlaston Police Station looked fine, as did Victoria Park.
You can’t not take a photo of this place. It’s gorgeous.
February 24th – Little firsts are the art of getting through winter. Little, tiny victories that mark the passage from darkness to light, and tonight, on my way home from work, it was my first normal-time commute in something approximating daylight, rather than darkness.
OK, it was wet, windy, murky, verging on the brink daylight, but it was perceptibly not dark. A little victory.
The joy of this almost totally took my mind off what an unutterably foul ride it was…
February 19th – Snatched quickly whilst stopped at the lights, on the commute home 13 hours later. The ring road in Walsall is almost deserted, and it’s raining. Everything is wet, and colours blend and blur in the night. I’m tired. My eyes are sore from fatigue. But the wind was behind me, it was pleasingly warm, and to see the beauty of the wet, urban kaleidoscope was a minor but tangible joy.
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